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Comment by freeone3000 | Hacker News Reader

I’d focus more on print usability and readability guidelines than computer guidelines. 5Hz eink is closer to a moving newspaper than a slow computer.

https://www.mediapoint.com.au/design-tips/composition-layout... might be moderately helpful.

But my advice: do not count on anything refreshing ever. Do not have animations, or transitions. Preload things to the correct spaces, then fill in. Reserve fixed white areas for output, and then fill in with black. (This works much better than the reverse!)

For quite long running processes, it might be worth having it behind a second page load.

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> But my advice: do not count on anything refreshing ever. Do not have animations, or transitions. Preload things to the correct spaces, then fill in. Reserve fixed white areas for output, and then fill in with black. (This works much better than the reverse!)

I would ammend to this that if you have an operation that can't complete quickly, it's better to have some kind of animation, even if it's notably slower than the already-slow screen refresh so that the user can tell that there's something happening.

Progress bars still work. Gratuitous animations don't.

The Bigme's boot screen has a 1 Hz animation of the outlined logo filling in with black letter by letter which looks pretty decent in my opinion.

Bret Victor's Magic Ink essay is certainly relevant here: https://worrydream.com/MagicInk/

I'd kill for regular UIs that did this.

Out of curiosity: Why?

I'm constantly hitting the wrong button because some animation shifted it, some dialog popped over shit, or some notification decided now was a good time to cover the thing I was trying to do. The animations make things feel sluggish. And they don't even look good.

The only advice that doesn't improve all UIs is the bit about filling in with white and adding black after.

Moving elements on screens is viewed as slick but is also a strong statement that the website knows how it is best to consume itself and depriving the user of the control over how to interact with it. I think there's been a big misunderstanding from UX designers about what features users actually value over time and too great a reliance on short window A/B UX comparisons where the cool effect of animations has not yet worn through.

This is also complicated by the fact that _all UX changes are bad_ until the users get used to them. So if you genuinely believe you're providing a better UX you do need to ignore the initial wave of negativity - which makes it difficult to tell knee-jerk reactions from genuine criticism if you're glossing over the results.

This stuff is user tested, many people prefer animations because they get confused if the UI changes instantly. For example if a button moves position when a sidebar is collapsed, the animation tells the user where the button has gone.

You are probably more observant and have good visual processing, so the animation is superfluous to you. Luckily it can be turned off on Android. On Linux I use XFCE which is almost instant - no animations by default.

> For example if a button moves position when a sidebar is collapsed, the animation tells the user where the button has gone.

That's also why you don't do automatically collapsible sidebars.

Did you read the recommendations that I was wishing were universal? Specifically: avoid moving elements around the UI.

Most people aren't that fast or impatient. The world isn't going to change to suit your brain...

In general, we only really notice the animations that go wrong, like the ones that are too slow or get in the way, but when executed by the book (like the numbers material design published, or perhaps even slightly faster), they are a valuable way of communicating intuition for how to use the UI to a user.

But yes, I can understand the desire to remove them, or at minimum drastically reduce their visual impact for e-ink

Did I stutter? I would like them all gone. I would like all visual elements to appear exactly in their final position and not resize, except in direct response to user interaction.

Animations are one of the things that I dread about using modern UIs. There are others too, no doubt.

I always turn off Android's animations in the developer settings and it makes everything so much more usable. (Animation Scale: 0x, I believe is the setting)

You don't need the developer settings. There's a "remove animations" option in the accessibility menu somewhere.

That may have been added since I started doing that, but thanks for the heads up :)

> In general, we only really notice the animations that go wrong, like the ones that are too slow or get in the way, but when executed by the book (like the numbers material design published, or perhaps even slightly faster), they are a valuable way of communicating intuition for how to use the UI to a user.

No, they are not. And the Material Design 3 is the prime example of how NOT to do the UI.

It was optimized for such metrics as "rebelliousness" and "being in the know", rather than usability.

I'm firmly on Android because at least I can turn off all the animations there. I develop for iOS, and it always feels like swimming through molasses in comparison.

The only animations that make sense are small ones that are focused in the foveal area. So pretty much only animated button presses.

That's a good shout, surprised this didn't occur to me actually as I was only recently dealing with a print-based feature at work. That's a helpful link, much appreciated.

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